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CCSU Counseling and Wellness Center |
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Ecstasy The pill, at $20 or so a pop, acts a little like stimulants such as methamphetamine and a little like a hallucinogen such as LSD. A hit produces a warm, fuzzy sense of well-being and the manic energy to dance until dawn. However, studies indicate that Ecstasy, the nickname for the drug compound 3,4 methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA), clicks off brain cells crucial to memory and sleep. "The party's over,'' says Alex Stalcup, a physician who runs a drug treatment center in Concord, Calif. ''Ecstasy hurts the brain. It is no longer a hypothesis. The drug is toxic. It is no longer appropriate to consider it a recreational drug.'' Dangers of Ecstasy Yet the urgency to get the drugs out of reach of teenagers has intensified as new scientific studies warn that Ecstasy causes brain damage. Stalcup, the drug addiction doctor who describes himself as a prototypical aging hippie'' and has tried Ecstasy, often spends Saturday nights at San Francisco-area raves, where he treats overheated and dehydrated teenagers. Scientists have studied images of the brain before and after Ecstasy. Stalcup describes the differences as ''graphic and gruesome.'' Ecstasy kills off part of the nerve in the brain that releases serotonin, the chemical that controls sleep, sexual function, memory, appetite and mood, says Wilkie Wilson, a neuropharmacologist at Duke University who co-wrote Buzzed, a guide to abused drugs. A study by Johns Hopkins University researcher George Ricaurte in Baltimore compared the brain scans of 14 Ecstasy users to non-users' scans and found nerve damage that persists for at least seven years. Teens have more serotonin-producers than they need, Wilson says, but some of those nerves are lost with aging. ''Ecstasy users probably don't realize this, but they are aging themselves prematurely,'' he says. ''I expect them to have clinical depression and sleep disorders down the road. It impairs learning, which is a particularly bad thing for teenagers.'' |
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